‘Saturday Night Live’: Natalie Portman Gets Excited for the Winter Olympics in Monologue

Natalie Portman opened Saturday Night Live with a hilarious monologue, proving that she could easily do more comedies if she wanted to. She tried to show her excitement for the 2018 Winter Olympics, since she hosted the last episode before the show breaks for the event.

During the monologue, the SNL cast gave it the full sports coverage treatment. Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon did the play-by-play, with Leslie Jones on sideline reporting. The sketch parodied NBC’s oppressive Olympics coverage, where the commentators try to outshine the athletes.

Although the sketch was very short (due in part to a long Fox & Friends cold open), viewers at home loved it.

This is the Oscar-winner’s second time hosting the long-running NBC sketch comedy. She preciously hosted back in 2006, with Fall Out Boy as the musical guest. Her musical guest this time is “New Rules” singer Dua Lipa.

Unlike last week’s host, Will Ferrell, Portman does have a project to promote. Her new film is Annihilation, a sci-fi horror film from Ex Machina director Alex Garland. The movie hits theaters on Feb. 23 and also stars Tessa Thompson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Portman also joined a project called Vox Lux, which was originally supposed to star Rooney Mara. She also replaced Reese Witherspoon in Noah Hawley’s Pale Blue Dot, a film about an astronaut whose life unravels when she returns home.

The Jackie star has gained more attention lately for her activism. She has taken a leading role in the “Time’s Up” movement to stop workplace sexual harassment.

Portman created a viral moment at the Golden Globes last month, when she took a dig at the Hollywood Foreign Press for not nominating a single woman for Best Director. “And here are the all-male nominees,” she said, before introducing the nominees, who all looked awkward when the cameras showed them.

During the Los Angeles Women’s March on Jan. 20, Portman told the crowd she received a horrifying fan letter when she was 13 years old, after making Leon: The Professional.

“At 13 years old, the message from our culture was clear to me,” she concluded. “I felt the need to cover my body and to inhibit my expression and my work in order to send my own message to the world that I’m someone worthy of safety and respect. The response to my expression, from small comments about my body to more threatening deliberate statements, served to control my behavior through an environment of sexual terrorism.”

Photo credit: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC